Explanation:
Orbiting over the north pole of planet
Earth on May 5,
the MODIS instrument on-board the
Terra spacecraft, recorded
this view of the ice cap
700 kilometers below.
A radial grid centered on the pole is shown on top of the approximately
true color image where each pixel covers
about one square kilometer.
Frozen sea ice appears
whitish while open water or newly
refrozen ice looks black.
An impressive criss-crossing network of cracks in ice shifting
above a liquid water ocean is visible, traced by
the meandering dark lines.
In fact, the dark network of cracks in the
sea ice is
reminiscent of another
world in our solar system which may also harbor a liquid
water ocean -- Jupiter's ice moonEuropa.